Wisconsin Journal of Education Volume 3 (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1859 edition. Excerpt: ... but one reason. We have forsaken the path of nature. We have made edncation the dreary task of acquiring other men's ideas, and reduced by so doing the labor of education to the reluctant task of the slave. We have too far abandoned the end of edncation, and have sought a miserable and unworthy compensation, by adding to the means. In a word, we do not make education a Mental PossesSion. We make it only a possession of the memory--a borrowed thing--held by the feeblest of all tenures, and go through the world with the disgraceful yoke of the borrower forever upon our necks. We have been making education merely a theory--a theory of growth We have exalted it above the common concerns of life--for the acquisition of ideas is not their application. We make pupils mental misers, burying the given talent in the earth of a deadened intellect, instead of putting their thoughts out to usury in this busy world. We have begotten a race of educated dilettanti, whose sentences fall upon a subject like the playful tapping of a lady's fan, rather than the sturdy blows of a strong man's arm. Says Locke: " There are those who are very assiduous in reading, and yet do not much advance their knowledge by it. They dream on in a constant course of reading and cramming themselves, but not digesting any thing, it produces nothing but an heap of crudities. If their memories retain well, one may say they have the materials of knowledge; but like those for building, they are of no advantage, if there be no other use made of them but to let them lie heaped np together." And again: " We are of the ruminating kind, and it is not enough to cram ourselves with a load of collections. Unless we chew them over again, they will not give us strength and nourishment." And again, ...